In its final report, a federal blue-ribbon commission suggests that it may be time to throw in the towel on Yucca Mountain, the embattled project to store high-level nuclear waste in Nevada. Billions have already been spent on the project, which appears to have reached a dead end.

But the urgency to find a safe, permanent home for nuclear waste in the U.S. was tragically underscored last March by the destruction of three Japanese reactors and their storage pools of spent fuel rods, after an ocean tsunami overwhelmed the Fukushima plant’s coastal defenses.

According to the Commission:

“The need for a new strategy is urgent, not just to address these damages and costs but because this generation has a fundamental, ethical obligation to avoid burdening future generations with the entire task of finding a safe, permanent solution for managing hazardous nuclear materials they had no part in creating…”

The report is the culmination of two years’ work by the commission, and says its recommendations offer, “the best chance of success going forward, based on previous nuclear waste management experience in the U.S. and abroad.”

Key recommendations for Nuclear Waste:

– A consent-based approach to siting future nuclear waste storage and disposal facilities, noting that trying to force such facilities on unwilling states, tribes and communities has not worked.

– Responsibility for the nation’s nuclear waste management program be transferred to a new organization; independent of the Dept. of Energy

– Assurance that fees being paid into the Nuclear Waste Fund – about $750 million a year – are being set aside and available for use as Congress initially intended

Toward that end, the commission is urging an immediate search for a new underground storage site, as well as transitional sites to provide an alternative to storing highly radioactive used fuel rods at the nation’s nuclear power plants. As Ingrid Becker and I reported last year, the technology already exists for permanent storage of the 65,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel currently parked at about 75 operating and shutdown reactor sites around the country (more than 3,000 tons in California). Meanwhile, working power plants nationwide are generating another 2,000 tons of waste every year.

The government has another 2,500 tons of nuclear waste, mostly from past weapons programs, at a handful of government-owned sites, including an underground site near Carlsbad, New Mexico, the world’s only fully operational geologic repository for radioactive waste.

Christopher Joyce reports for NPR News on the commission’s final report and the growing consensus that active local involvement is critical in siting decisions.

]]>http://blogs.kqed.org/climatewatch/2012/01/26/requiem-for-yucca-mountain-federal-commission-says-to-move-on/feed/2Yes, In Our Backyardhttp://blogs.kqed.org/climatewatch/2011/07/26/yes-in-our-backyard-2/
http://blogs.kqed.org/climatewatch/2011/07/26/yes-in-our-backyard-2/#commentsWed, 27 Jul 2011 05:29:44 +0000http://blogs.kqed.org/climatewatch/?p=14274After more than a decade with a nuclear waste dump next door, the sky has not fallen on Carlsbad

Okay, so Yucca Mountain hasn’t worked out so well. In fact, the current betting is that the planned Nevada repository for nuclear waste will never open its doors. No matter. New Mexico beckons.

A transport container for nuclear waste, outside the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico.

Few Americans seem to realize that the world’s only functioning geologic repository for nuclear waste of any kind is already open for business in the southeastern corner of New Mexico. In fact, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant is well beyond the “pilot” phase. It’s been taking in truckloads of the stuff since 1999, without mishap, it’s success no doubt a factor in its anonymity.

An average of 30 truckloads a week from all corners of the US, roll into what is essentially a glorified salt mine, licensed by the federal government to accept low-level “transuranic” waste from defense-related facilities only.

The waste is “isolated” 2,000 feet below ground in the saline remains of the vast Permian Sea that covered the region more than 200 million years ago.

On a recent tour of the underground tunnels or “drifts” where the waste is entombed, my guide, Bobby St. John, picked up a marble-sized salt crystal and pointed to a tiny bubble trapped inside. “That right there,” he said, “is a 230-million-year-old drop of water.”

It’s about the only water in evidence, part of what makes this a promising place to put away radioactive cast-offs for good. The other is the virtual absence of seismic potential, something that has dogged proponents of Yucca Mountain.

You can tag along on my tour by listening to the radio report that accompanies this post, airing on The California Report as the final installment of our three-part series on the nuclear waste dilemma. You can also watch a video segment on WIPP produced by the PBS program Need to Know.

The Forsmark nuclear power plant is one of three in Sweden where about half the nation's electricity comes from 10 reactors built on the coast.

Sweden gets a lot of press as the country that’s figured out not only how and where to dispose of its nuclear waste but – significantly — how to win community support.

Today, in the second installment of our radio series, we’ll hear the Swedes explain what it took to change public attitudes. You can also take a visual tour here of some of the places I visited and people I met while tracking Sweden’s progress.

And you can peek inside the central interim storage facility with this video that shows where the waste is currently stored in what looks like large swimming pools.

Inger Nordholm at the site on the Baltic Sea where the Swedish Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Company hopes to open a geologic repository in 2025 -- if regulators grant them a license.

Forsmark is part of the 22,000-person community of Osthammar which has been deeply involved in the repository issue for at least 15 years. You can read more about its work on the community website.

While there are still plenty of critics and some unresolved questions about whether the company’s proposed disposal method can withstand the test of time, local residents so far are willing to trust that the waste can be managed safely. And they’ve come to accept that the stable bedrock in their region could be one of the safest places to bury all of Sweden’s nuclear waste for the next 100,000 years.

Osthammar of course stands to benefit from the jobs and investment that would come along with a repository, but everyone I talked with in Sweden told me this willingness to step forward is much more than financial.

“We have a Swedish expression, when you hunt the fox, you have to deal with the bite, says Brita Freudenthal, a spokeswoman for SKB. “We have the nuclear power, we use the electricity and we created the spent fuel and this is our responsibility. Most Swedes are very much aware of that.”

Jacob Spangenberg, the Mayor of Osthammar, told me he doesn’t believe burying the waste in his community will create a stigma or hurt tourism in this picturesque area on the Baltic. Rather, he says, it will generate global interest “In how to solve this very difficult issue, that people in Japan, and California and Germany must solve in one way or another.”

Among the people I ran across in Scandinavia was Janet Kotra, a senior staffer with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. She was there for a meeting of international nuclear communities and told me the United States can learn a few things from Sweden, which admitted a long time ago that solving the nuclear waste dilemma is not just a technical issue.

With plans for a repository at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain on hold — perhaps permanently — Kotra says the US government is already thinking differently when it comes to community engagement. Regulators and government agencies need a commitment, she says “that the process for making regulatory decisions is available and accessible to a broader public so there can be that social acceptability.” If not, Kotra adds, “We’ll find ourselves right back where we are today and we’ll find ourselves once again looking for another alternative.”

It could be worse. This could be Illinois, the undisputed spent fuel champ, with more than 8,000 tons piled up at plants. As it is, California ranks eighth in the nation.

“This country has an obligation to those states and those communities to take those materials and put them into deep geologic disposal, where they can be safely isolated for a very long period of time,” says Per Peterson, who chairs the nuclear engineering department at UC Berkeley.

Trouble is, the country seems farther now from meeting that obligation than it was in 1998, the original legislative deadline for opening a permanent repository for spent nuclear fuel.

Peterson is also member of a White House commission on nuclear waste solutions, due to report its findings next Friday. Between now and then, Climate Watch and KQED’s The California Report will collaborate on a three-part series on the issue of high-level nuclear waste.

“We’ve made progress but it’s taken an enormous amount of time,” Peterson told The California Report’s Senior Producer Ingrid Becker, in a recent interview.

The Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future is not expected to offer specific site recommendations for long-term storage. More likely, it will suggest an interim strategy of sort-of-long-term storage for the 65,000 tons of accumulated waste sitting more or less literally in the back yards and “attics” of US plants.

Peterson thinks a good place to start is with the spent fuel still sitting in dry storage at two decommissioned plants in California:

- Humboldt Bay, the state’s first commercial nuclear plant, which went online in 1963 (160 tons), and

– Rancho Seco, east of Stockton, which Sacramento voters shut down by referendum in 1989 (202 tons)

Peterson suggests consolidating the “relatively modest amounts” of fuel from those locations somewhere that can serve as a pilot project for “informing decisions as to what do with the spent fuel of larger quantities at Diablo Canyon and San Onofre” (California’s two operating plants). Peterson says that “getting to the development” of a permanent tomb for spent fuel “conceivably could happen in 20 to 30 years.” From some estimates we’ve seen, that’s at the optimistic end of the timeline.

Speaking of timelines, you can explore the history of commercial nuclear power in California, with our interactive timeline, assembled by Chris Penalosa.

Experts agree that most vulnerable to both terrorist attack and natural disaster are the uranium fuel rods suspended in pools of water at reactor sites. Utilities operating Diablo Canyon and San Onofre have both begun moving older, less radioactive rods to more durable “dry casks.” The bad news is that two-thirds of California’s spent fuel remains in “wet pools.”

The good news is that Gregory Jaczko, chairman of the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission, told a Senate hearing that he believes the temporary storage methods used in this country are adequate for the next 100 years or so. Let’s hope he’s right because at this rate, it might take that long to find a permanent home.

]]>http://blogs.kqed.org/climatewatch/2011/07/23/californias-nuclear-burden/feed/0Sweden’s Holding Tank For Nuclear Wastehttp://blogs.kqed.org/climatewatch/2011/05/16/swedens-holding-tank-for-spent-fuel/
http://blogs.kqed.org/climatewatch/2011/05/16/swedens-holding-tank-for-spent-fuel/#commentsMon, 16 May 2011 23:23:19 +0000http://blogs.kqed.org/climatewatch/?p=12696This is the third in a series of dispatches from Sweden, where Ingrid Becker is touring facilities for storage of nuclear waste. These posts preview an upcoming radio series on The California Report.

The panel advising President Obama is recommending the United States “proceed expeditiously” to establish one or more consolidated “interim” sites for storing high-level nuclear waste. Expeditious isn’t a word often associated with the U.S. Department of Energy’s troubled waste siting program. And, commissioners didn’t say where they would suggest putting the spent fuel, but Yucca Mountain certainly wasn’t mentioned in the series of draft reports from the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future. What the commissioners did recommend is that a new organization –independent of the Department of Energy — be formed to develop a waste disposal program. The idea didn’t set well with some House Republicans.

Meanwhile, the political wrangling over Nevada’s Yucca Mountain as a permanent vault for nuclear waste is exposing the federal government to substantial future penalties for breaking promises that it would take care of the spent fuel from nuclear power plants.

A new report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office details how agreements with at least two Western states — Colorado and Idaho — may be threatened by termination of the Yucca Mountain repository program, and could result in penalties of up to $27.4 million annually.

Against this backdrop, Climate Watch continues its overseas reporting trip to explore what another technologically savvy country, Sweden, is doing with it’s high level radioactive waste.

Don't look for a diving board. All of Sweden's high-level waste is temporarily kept in pools of water underground. (Photo: Ingrid Becker)

I’m grateful that GPS is now standard equipment for many cars. Without it I might still be lost on the back roads of Sweden in my rented Volvo.

On this leg of the journey I’m checking out the central repository where Sweden is storing the waste from its ten commercial reactors temporarily, in water, until a permanent geologic repository is built. A company brochure (available only as a PDF download) describes the storage process at the facility known as Clab.

Clab is in an area just outside the historic coastal town of Oskarshamn, about 155 miles from Stockholm. Despite several road signs, I had a little trouble finding the place, partly because I kept backtracking. Somehow I could not quite believe that a two-lane country road surrounded by forests and small farms could really be leading to both a nuclear power plant and the place where all the country’s nuclear waste goes.

Spent fuel assemblies are housed in steel containers and submerged in water to shield the radioactive material. (Photo: Ingrid Becker)

Before we enter the controlled facility we must slip on rubber shoe covers, a hardhat and protective jacket, and then strap on a monitor calibrated to set off an alarm should it detect any unusually high levels of radon.

Under Sweden’s unique system for temporarily storing high-level radioactive waste, a specially designed ship carries the spent-fuel assemblies from the coastal reactors to this central facility which is built underground deep in the bedrock. There the waste is submerged in huge pools to shield against radioactivity.

The spent fuel assemblies arrive in casks, which are placed under the water in open steel canisters designed to prevent spontaneous nuclear reactions.

Clab employee Peter Thursson swabs the floor as part of a routine radiation monitoring program at Sweden's interim storage facility for high-level waste.

SKB says it has never had an accident here but there’s no escaping the fact that this is dangerous stuff. As the tour continues we find ourselves peering directly into one of the crystalline pools and examining curious geometric patterns formed by the sharp lines from dozens of containers filled with uranium dioxide pellets. Freudenthal drives home the point.

“We have here about 2,000 tons that you are looking (at), and you can stand here as long as you want to,” she tells me before quickly adding, “If we take one of these bundles out of the water I will give you 20 seconds to leave this room alive.”

Storing the high-level waste in water is not unique to Sweden, but this is the only country that collects it in one central facility owned and operated by a private company. Clab employs 100 people and is designed to hold up to 8,000 tons of spent fuel, though its current license limits it to 5,000 tons. Swedish nuclear industry officials believe concentrating the fuel in a single facility is safer than storing it near the power plants or spreading it around to several sites as the U.S. and other countries with nuclear power do now.

]]>http://blogs.kqed.org/climatewatch/2011/05/16/swedens-holding-tank-for-spent-fuel/feed/0Sweden’s Nuclear Waste Solutionhttp://blogs.kqed.org/climatewatch/2011/05/02/swedens-nuclear-waste-solution/
http://blogs.kqed.org/climatewatch/2011/05/02/swedens-nuclear-waste-solution/#commentsTue, 03 May 2011 02:21:00 +0000http://blogs.kqed.org/climatewatch/?p=12495In the weeks to come, Climate Watch will launch a three-part radio series on the nuclear waste dilemma. As part of the reporting for that series, The California Report’s senior producer, Ingrid Becker, traveled to Sweden to examine a program touted as a potential model for the world. This dispatch from Becker is a preview of the series.

How Sweden is getting some to say, “Yes, in my backyard,” Part 1

The country that brought the world Alfred Nobel and his dynamite, Volvo cars and IKEA furniture is busy touting another invention. The Swedish Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Company, or SKB, has asked for government permission to build what could become one of the world’s first permanent geologic repositories for spent nuclear fuel.

SKB public relations officer Brita Freudenthal encourages visitors to touch models of the copper canisters at the Äspö Hard Rock Laboratory, where plans are being developed for permanent storage of nuclear waste. (Photo: Ingrid Becker)

I’m in Sweden this month to learn just what this environmentally-conscious nation of nine million people can teach us about managing the radioactive refuse from commercial reactors. While the waste from California’s two nuclear power plants — Diablo Canyon and San Onofre – is piling up in temporary storage containers (with still more at the decommissioned Rancho Seco plant, near Lodi), Sweden is moving forward with a program 30 years in the making, to safely dispose of the spent uranium dioxide pellets that fuel its ten reactors

”I believe it has been a strength that industry has had a clear task to solve the (waste) problem,” says SKB’s Chief Executive Officer Claes Thegerström, in a recent interview for the company website. “When we began, we had right from the beginning a mix of experienced people from the industry. We had outgoing academics and, strong authorities, which allowed us – in contrast to the American way – to own the mission.”

This week I’m in Stockholm where we’ll hear more about the Swedish example during a two-day gathering of social scientists, legal scholars, and industry experts, as well as political and community leaders from Sweden and abroad.

One of my first stops on this Scandinavian tour was the underground laboratory where the Swedes are pioneering the so-called KBS-3 concept. The plan is to isolate the nuclear waste in copper canisters buffered by bentonite clay and then bury it 500 meters deep in crystalline bedrock, where it will remain for the next 100,000 years.

Last fall, a delegation from President Obama’s Blue Ribbon Commission on Nuclear Waste also came to explore the Äspö Hard Rock Laboratory that sits outside the scenic town of Oskarshamn on Sweden’s east coast. Now it was my turn.

Buses carry an estimated 10,000 visitors a year into the tunnels at the Äspö Hard Rock Laboratory in Southern Sweden. (Photo: Ingrid Becker)

Next post: “Hard Rock Cafe” — Ingrid goes underground to experience the Hard Rock Lab. Later this month she’ll tour the interim storage facility for all of Sweden’s high-level nuclear waste and visit the towns where more than 80% of the population said it would be okay to put a spent fuel repository in their backyard.